The Personal Side

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Determining the greatest MMA fights of all time is a very tough decision. In fact, it’s almost entirely made up of personal opinion after the facts are done. Even the facts are sometimes thrown out the window when you talk to someone who simply happened to have a good day that day. Maybe it was the one fight where they had a lot of friends over with a lot of drinks to watch the fight. It’s a speculation that can be argued to the end of the Earth, and these fights are simply my personal opinion.

My first one is Dan Henderson versus Mauricio Rua in 2011 in a UFC fight. There was a significant age difference, and they were from two completely different worlds, but their weight and height the same. Dan Henderson was forty one years old, and plenty of fighting experience with thirty six fights. Unfortunately, age gets to everyone so does experience out-weigh age?

With the contender being twenty nine years old more people put their money on Mauricio Rua winning the fight. The whole fight was incredibly close which was what made the fight incredibly entertaining. Regardless of who you were backing in the fight, you still were entirely sure who it was that was going to come out on top in the end. After the fifth round, it came down to a decision by the judges, and it turned out to be Dan Henderson that won the match.

The second fight I agree to be one of the greatest MMA fights of all time was on The Ultimate Fighter, which aired on the TV Station known as Spike for fourteen seasons. This fight was Stephan Bonnar versus the fighter known as Forrest Griffin back in the year 2005. Not only were they at around the same height, and weight, but they knew each other personally being that they were from the same gym. Now, of course, this could be speculation that fights aired on TV, especially a cable show, are set up with the pure intention of catching the curiosity of fans. In this case, it absolutely worked, and it was definitely a fight worth watching.

You could tell that the fighters knew each other well with the all-out war they unleashed onto each other. Being that they come from the same city and the same gym, it must have been something they truly enjoyed. Testing out their strength, and skill in a real match after training so close to each other in a place that these fighters likely called their second home. In the end, it couldn’t come out any way other than a decision by the judges. Their bodies certainly would’ve given out long before their fighter’s spirit did which would’ve made it difficult to score. In the end, it was decided that Forrest Griffin was the winner of the fight. Although as hard as they fought, I doubt either one of them in the ring felt like the loser after those three intense rounds.

Just like any sport, MMA is competitive, and the matches that these fighters go through are for the sake of getting to the top. The question is who is the current champion to overthrow in the world of MMA fighting?

There is one fighter who has punched and kicked his way to the top as the greatest MMA fighter of our time. That fighter’s name is . In fighting competitions such as the UFC, he is better known by his nickname “Rush.” He’s incredibly popular in Canada as one of their most popular athletes. More specifically Georges was both born and raised in Montreal, Quebec.

In the past, he’s always stated that his fighting started when he was merely at child at school. Georges was consistently bullied by other kids at school, and as a solution, his father enrolled him in karate classes at the age of seven so he could learn to defend himself. Needless to say, I highly doubt that the kids that bullied him as a child kept bullying him after that. Karate was the very first martial art he learned, and what he enjoyed doing the majority of his teenage years before learning anything else.

The vital part of MMA fighting though is mixing multiple forms of martial arts, and Georges utilized a total of at least three martial arts in addition to karate. Those included boxing, wrestling, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. One could only assume that particular mix of fighting skills that he spent years learning was an important part of his success as an MMA fighter. Learning multiple forms of martial arts alone is a marvel without mentioning what he managed to accomplish with that very talent. It takes a massive amount of dedication that many people rarely retain from the very young age that he started.

He turned into a professional fighter at the young age of twenty one and had since fought in at least twenty seven fights in the UFC alone. It’s not easy to become one of the best MMA fighters in the UFC league, but in those twenty seven gruesome fights he’s secured a spot with only two losses. There are eight weight classes for men in the UFC fighting competition, and Georges St-Pierre fought his matches in the Welterweight class of fighters which ranges from one hundred fifty five pounds to one hundred seventy pounds. In this class, there is a fierce competition of over one hundred fighters easily.

Everyone losses the title eventually, and after a while he regained it, but regardless of who the title currently belongs too it cannot be contended that he is one of MMA’s greatest fighters if not the greatest. When it comes down to the facts, he was the greatest, but everyone’s personal opinion gets involved. At the moment, he has stepped away from professional fighting for a little while. It’s still very possible that he’ll return to show himself in an MMA ring once again before he decides to retire his career as a fighter.

S0 would you rather be stuck in a ring with the greatest MMA fighter of all time or be 200 feet high washing windows while connected to ropes and sitting on a wooden plank? I would take the ladder and I think so would you.

MMA stands for Mixed Martial Arts, and it’s a sport that’s climbing higher to its peak every day as its popularity has massively grown in the recent years. People who were to glimpse at it on TV may mistake it to be a boxing match initially, but will find some key differences. For one, you’ll see them grappling, kicking, fighting still while on the ground, and much more.

The idea behind MMA fighting is to put two fighters in a ring to fight using everything they know in a variety of martial arts. If you were watching it for the first time, then you may even think there aren’t any rules to it. You’d be sorely mistaken as there are many rules still in place to make it a competitive sport that fighters from anywhere in the world can participate in to a safe degree.

That’s also the reason why that they’re always done within the confines of a cage. In wrestling, a cage usually signifies a brutal match where victory was the only escape. This caged style of fighting is ment to excite the crowd with a theatrical experience and help promote tickets ahead of time, and use as a prop. MMA is a sport that takes it more seriously. In MMA, the cage is to keep them from getting injured by getting thrown out of the ring. The fighters who enter it aren’t acting and have been training for a significant portion of their lives to make it in.

To become an MMA fighter isn’t an easy task for any human being to accomplish. There’s no trick or any way to cheat to be a fighter. It takes a massive amount of training and conditioning on a level that only a few other sports arguably reach. Their body is their lives, and the hone it every single day sweating more often than more people experience in their lifetime, and they do it because they love it.

Similar could be said for another fighting sport such as boxing, but MMA adds more extremes, and by its name alone it includes more than just boxing. The fighters who enter the ring are able to enter it because they are skilled in multiple forms of martial arts which may include boxing, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, kick boxing, karate, tae-kwon-do, and any other martial art that’s recognized internationally. There are many fighting forms out there for fighters to train after which leaves nearly endless possibilities when you take two skilled MMA fighters and put them in the ring against each other.

You could put anyone in a ring, and pay them to fight, but there’s a big difference between that and professional fights provided by organizations such as the UFC. That difference is the passion that these fighters have that drives them to become individually the fine-tuned fighting machines that they are. It drives them to keep fighting, and working hard so even if they lose one fight, their fans know there’s a chance of them winning the next. It’s a fast growing sport that’s popular for a very good reason, and one that everyone should check out.